In Jules Olitski’s Untitled, 1964, expansive zones of deep rose and vivid orange sweep across the canvas, interrupted at the edges by thin bands of green. Loaned to the Denver Museum of Art in the 1970s and belonging to the same private collection for decades, Untitled is an exceptional example of Olitski’s mastery in color. The artist painted the work during his tenure at Bennington College in Vermont, where he taught alongside artists Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland. Untitled was executed at the cusp of two critical eras in Olitski’s career: the Stain paintings of 1960–1964 and the Spray paintings of 1965–1970. The present work is an example of the former, created by applying acrylic paint directly onto raw canvas, allowing the pigment to soak into its fibers. This “staining” technique unites figure and ground and melds color with canvas, engaging viewers in an intense optical experience.
“Color sometimes appears to have been breathed onto the surface or, when thinned down and soaked into the canvas, to have fused with it, creating an ineffable, seemingly weightless expanse.”
—Karen WilkinWhile encapsulating the tenets of his Stain paintings, Untitled hints toward the experimental spray-paint technique that Olitski would develop shortly after. The gentle, atmospheric interaction between orange and pink along the diagonal axis foretells the misty haze of intermingling colors that Olitski achieved with a spray gun the next year. It was this innovative technique that led to Olitski’s selection as one of four artists for the American Pavilion at the 1966 Venice Biennale. It is evident that the selection of Spray works shown at the Biennale owe their development to Untitled and other Stain paintings, as Olitski explored a new method of paint application to achieve such organic, soft interplay of color.
Jules Olitski, Pink Alert, 1966, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Friends of the Corcoran), 2014.136.103, Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Jules Olitski / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Olitski’s cultivation of rich swaths of color established him as a central figure in Color Field painting, alongside iconic artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Morris Louis. In response to Abstract Expressionism's gestural fervor, Color Field painters sought instead to assert the flatness of the canvas and allow pure color to narrate its surface. This intention is expressed in Untitled, where orange and pink soar freely as they bisect the painting from corner to corner, nudging green to the outer bounds of the canvas. Notably, although Olitski explored the entire spectrum of color, in the 1960s he often returned to pink hues. The present work features a bold magenta, at once celebratory and indulgent.
The artistic ethos of Color Field painting was famously championed by critic Clement Greenberg, who included Olitski in Post-Painterly Abstraction, the revolutionary exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art the same year the present work was painted, which announced Color Field painters as the new vanguards of modernism. In Untitled, Olitski’s commitment to purity of color and his unflinching embrace of the surface of the painting demonstrate why Greenberg once described him as the "best painter alive.”
“Painting has to do with a lot of things. Color is among the things it has to do with. It has to do with surface. It has to do with shape. It has to do with feelings which are more difficult to get at.”
—Jules OlitskiCondition Report
Description
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Provenance
Dr. Charles Hamlin, Denver
Private Collection, Massachusetts
Gifted by the above to the present ownerExhibited
The Denver Art Museum, 1973 (on loan)
Property of a Private Massachusetts Collection Being Sold to Benefit a Charitable Foundation
18
Untitled
acrylic on canvas
82 x 57 in. (208.3 x 144.8 cm)
Painted in 1964.
Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000
Nina Piro
Specialist, Associate Vice President
npiro@phillips.com
646-647-5387
Modern & Contemporary Art
New York Auction 17 July 2024
